First, my goal - I want maximum performance to move big files across my network, within reason. Protecting the data is important but not the highest/only consideration, so I think I can rule out extreme redundancy, especially at the expense of performance. Ideally, I'd like to break the 100mb/s barrier consistently on file transfers.
Hardware: I have 4 disks of 2TB (three identical WD green and one other), and one 4tb hitachi almost new. I also have a few other drives from 1tb down to 320gb that up to now I have not considered using, though they could potentially be used in a JBOD group. I have a server dedicated to this purpose with 16gb ram and a Pentium G2120.
OS/software: I am running Linux Mint 15, and Plex is transcoding everything to serve to various clients (Raspberry Pi htpc, two other HTPC's, mobile devices). Rarely if ever need to serve multiple streams at the same time. So far this has run very well.
Known options: I have been running two of the 2tb drives striped and backing this up to the 4tb drive up to now. Performance has been outstanding on the striped drives. I just acquired the third WD 2tb drive, and accidentally wiped everything yesterday. I tried the 3 drives in a Raid 5 and the performance was not where I'd like it to be. I have considered striping across the 3 WD drives and continuing to use the 4tb as a straight backup. I have not tried any more complex options like using multiple partitions on the 4tb drive as separate pieces of an array, thus "adding" two more 2tb drives in the form of two partitions.
And I have plenty of memory to try a raidz, but so far the complexity has been thwarting me. If I could get high performance from a raidz, I'd like to try it (of course not raid0 level, but better than raid5).
Suggestions?
Hardware: I have 4 disks of 2TB (three identical WD green and one other), and one 4tb hitachi almost new. I also have a few other drives from 1tb down to 320gb that up to now I have not considered using, though they could potentially be used in a JBOD group. I have a server dedicated to this purpose with 16gb ram and a Pentium G2120.
OS/software: I am running Linux Mint 15, and Plex is transcoding everything to serve to various clients (Raspberry Pi htpc, two other HTPC's, mobile devices). Rarely if ever need to serve multiple streams at the same time. So far this has run very well.
Known options: I have been running two of the 2tb drives striped and backing this up to the 4tb drive up to now. Performance has been outstanding on the striped drives. I just acquired the third WD 2tb drive, and accidentally wiped everything yesterday. I tried the 3 drives in a Raid 5 and the performance was not where I'd like it to be. I have considered striping across the 3 WD drives and continuing to use the 4tb as a straight backup. I have not tried any more complex options like using multiple partitions on the 4tb drive as separate pieces of an array, thus "adding" two more 2tb drives in the form of two partitions.
And I have plenty of memory to try a raidz, but so far the complexity has been thwarting me. If I could get high performance from a raidz, I'd like to try it (of course not raid0 level, but better than raid5).
Suggestions?
